


Trouble Loves Me

by wishtheworst



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-26
Updated: 2011-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 07:25:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/174346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishtheworst/pseuds/wishtheworst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is changing, but nothing really changes at all. Takes place after s01.e13.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trouble Loves Me

**Author's Note:**

> _trouble loves me  
>  trouble needs me  
> two things more than you do  
> or would attempt to  
> \-- Morrissey “Trouble Loves Me”_

This isn’t how he pictured it, the aftermath. It should have been with Audrey, on the heels of all those revelations and deaths. She knows it too, but there is so much more rattling around in her head than just his broken body and her ability to fix it. Julia comes to pick her up when it’s finally over and he lets her, not needing the warning look she gives him as she puts Audrey into the car like she might a shocked child. Julia will wrap her up in cocoon of easy friendship, soft like cotton wadding and undemanding, and he can’t blame her for wanting that right now. He knows her well enough to know that she will spend the night with her two favorite poisons, sugar and alcohol, easy with a friend who doesn’t need her like he does. Someone who doesn’t need so much so desperately.

That doesn’t change that when he imagined it all going to shit and everything coming out he pictured it with her afterward. He pictured the distance collapsing between them, soft blonde hair brushing his face, small hands and smooth skin that felt even sweeter because they were the only sensation allowed in his isolation chamber. Just knowing was supposed to be enough, although now he can’t remember why he ever thought that.

Audrey had her poisons and he had his own, trading soft and sweet and bright for hard, bitter and dark. The docks are a dangerously short walk from anywhere in town and his feet know the way without any input from his brain that might dissuade them. He climbs onto the boat without announcing himself or asking because they both know it’s not necessary.

He feels like he should apologize maybe, but there are so many people who deserve one from him right now that he’ll be damned if he’s wasting one on Duke. He knows those arms are open, however insufferable and smug, no matter what.

For once the smugness isn’t there, just condolences kept terse enough to avoid embarrassment and a glass pushed into his hand while a hand roughly four times the size of Audrey’s strokes the back of his neck like a mother would. And it’s selfish; Nathan knows it is, because they both know which one of them feels it and who it’s for. They don’t talk about it. Not any of it – the losses, the anger, the revelations, the Troubles, the uneasiness of everything, the way it’s all getting worse, the times Duke used him and he let him, the times that situation has been reversed, the uselessness of touch, the reasons he still wants it, the necessity of not asking or explaining. They don’t talk at all.

He doesn’t stop picturing the way it should have been and he closes his eyes to that, lets it play on the back of his eyelids. It’s too much nothing, a blankness that fills up wrong anyway – voice too low, scent all wrong, tilting his face up instead of down to hers. In the end the reality isn’t quite as bad as the ruined fantasy. When his phone rings he ignores it, ignores Duke not ignoring it and tries to convince himself it’s because she would know somehow.

It’s not what he pictured. There’s never any need to with this – no one pictures familiar inevitability. It’s so worn in and more than a little worn out between them, threadbare rather than comfortable, but it’s durable and silent and pretends to be easy. It’s not what he imagined, the pitch black inside the boat swallowing them like his dead skin encases him, resentment and anger and acceptance filling up their mouths. It’s just what he expects, anticipates, waits for without really wanting.

In the disappointing end, the one that bears no resemblance to imagination, this is always waiting.

* * *

The cupcakes are stale from sitting open on the counter, the frosting hardened into crunchy peaks, but she chews thoughtfully on one anyway and contemplates dipping it into her glass. It probably couldn’t taste worse dipped in the fruity girls’ night wine Julia brought back, half as a joke and half because Audrey is obviously in the need for some comfort food therapy.

“What do you think? Is tonight more of a Casablanca or a Bridget Jones?” Julia stands in the doorway, smile on her face as artificial as the flavor in those cupcakes. She’s trying, really trying, but Audrey doesn’t even begin to know how to explain to her everything that’s happened in the last twelve hours and part of her doesn’t want to. What she already does know has obviously unsettled her. She likes Julia, really likes her. She loves Nathan and Duke, but she gets tired of the daily fluctuations between them and being caught in the middle of it. And she really likes having a girl friend, someone to watch bad tv with, dance in the kitchen to pop music they’re both a little ashamed to admit they like, to gossip about parts of Haven that have nothing to do with the Troubles. She can’t remember having that since she was little…

Since she was little. A childhood that maybe didn’t even exist? And that’s the problem with Julia’s offer of sappy movies. In the last few days Audrey has had to accept that the only parts of her life she can be sure are real are the ones that have happened here. Her whole life, as far as she can verify, is contained in a few volatile and confusing months that have undone everything she thought she knew about herself, about how the world works. A good cry over romantic mishaps isn’t going to fix that. But more than that, she’s not sure she can share any of that with Julia.

Audrey knows she would listen sympathetically, offer some kind of reassurance. She’s a good friend and has been since they met, kind of amazing Audrey at how quickly they grew close. But she can’t quite bring herself to draw Julia into this. She’s not sure how much of herself she can give to any other person who isn’t already enmeshed in whatever is happening here, and Julia is clear about the fact that while she’s from Haven, she’s not of it. She sees herself as an outsider, someone who got out and, despite whatever brought her back home, someone who can leave again whenever she feels like it. So how can Audrey dump this all in her lap? Sure, she can tell her about it, and she will eventually once it’s all processed and she has any idea what she’s supposed to do about it. But she can’t take it to her raw and open like it is now. More and more she’s realizing that she’s not like Julia. She can’t leave, wouldn’t if she could, but can’t even consider it now. Everything she knows for certain about herself, what little of it there is, is here.

There’s only one person who will understand and who she could expose everything to in this condition, if she wanted to. Right now she wants to, a lot. Still nothing changes the fact that she doesn’t really know who she is, or what she is, and Nathan’s probably had enough of that for one day. He wouldn’t say so, of course. He would let her pile it on his shoulders like everything else and act like he couldn’t feel that either and it seems more unfair now than ever. When he told her she could see it all over his face, how he thought telling it would be the end of something, like it solved something. Now that she knows she holds this power over him, holds his only connection to touch in the palm of her hand she doesn’t know what to do. Doesn’t know if she can even handle that, or if she wants to. If she’s grateful for Julia’s friendship that word doesn’t come close to how she feels about Nathan, and unfortunately she can state her feelings about as eloquently as he can. Not that she can even explain them clearly to herself. It’s been a very long time since she’s been close to anyone and that amplifies the risk of letting the closeness change. She knows she won’t try again if things go wrong because she let whatever is between them change out of control. Her life before, or at least what she remembers as her life before, taught her self-sufficiency to a fault.

She wishes she hadn’t let Julia take her home because it seemed like running away and she’s afraid he saw it that way too. Audrey thought she would be happier, or at least more at ease alone. Now she’s not so sure.

“Maybe tomorrow?” she answers, putting on what she hopes is a convincing smile. “I’m just going to turn in early tonight. Sorry.”

Julia nods, coming forward to give her a short tight hug before disappearing. She’s a good friend. Audrey knows she could probably let her all the way in and trust her with more than she does, which is why she won’t. After all, things aren’t going so well for the other people caught up in her life.

She takes one more bite out of the cupcake before pushing it away, forgotten and crumbling into pink paper. Her phone is in reach and after a brief debate she dials Nathan’s number, but it only rings half a dozen times and goes to voicemail. The second call is the same, but the third time it goes right to voicemail and Audrey knows when a phone has been silenced.

* * *

It’s cold for early fall, but he can’t quite make himself go back inside. It smells like sex in there, sweat and Nathan’s left behind scent that’s probably in his imagination more than anything real. Besides, the chill feels good on his damp skin and he closes his eyes against it, breathes in slow and deep and lets it sting all the way into his lungs. He’s glad Nathan’s gone, like always. There’s no breathing room when he’s there and it’s more than a little insulting to be the perpetual consolation prize. Duke knows if he had any damn sense he’d tell him to go home, but the last thing he needs is more time to wonder when the inevitable is coming.

He did almost send him on his way tonight when she called, almost told him to go knock on her door and not take no for an answer. The advice might not have been welcome, but he needs to hear it and Duke isn’t sure where else he’s going to. In the beginning the thing between the three of them was kind of fun; it drove Nathan crazy and Audrey seemed as amused by it as he was. It didn’t mean anything and he was pretty sure how it was going to end right from the beginning. So far in their lives he’d found most women had a type they preferred, and it was either his or Nathan’s. When things had been better it was a sport between them, betting on who could get the girl to go home with him. No hard feelings.

He’s glad to be alone. Most of the time he would prefer to be, but tonight he’s especially glad to be away from both of them. They’re too much alike in the most annoying ways and he’s sick to death of being the one who’s not oblivious, the one who cares too much about them both and is content with getting half in return, if that. It’s not like him. It’s stupid and self-sacrificing and it feels bad, a trinity of things he’s tried to avoid his entire life. Being part of the get along gang is slowly shifting him into someone he already knows he doesn’t like a whole lot.

The worst part is that he knows if this round of that game ended with the girl going home with him, he would feel like an asshole. It’s a one-time thing with him, always. He likes it that way, likes to think that he can pull up tracks and leave any time he feels like it. It’s not that he has some illusion of Audrey as a delicate flower who needs to be handled gently. It’s exactly the opposite and he’s pretty sure that she’s used to operating a lot more like him than Nathan that way. But things would be different for her with Nathan, he thinks, where he knows with him it would be more of the same. He’s tired of being the path of least resistance for anybody who happens to be looking for it.

He thinks a lot about leaving these days. There’s not a lot of good reasons for staying anymore or even for trying to tell himself that the one he came back for is worth much of anything. It’s never going to be like it was, or worse, it’s always going to be exactly like it was and never like he likes to remember things. And the one thing Vanessa was explicit about, and that Julia confirmed with her sanctimonious little field trip to the cemetery, was that the man with the tattoo is part of Haven, part of the Troubles and whatever is unraveling the town faster every day. It’s stupid to stay here and pretend that sleeping with a gun under his pillow and wasting his days playing cop with Nathan and Audrey is going to solve anything.

But stupid is the order of the day lately and he knows it’s going to stay that way for a very long time.


End file.
